I am involved with this professionally, and the complaints have risen a level where international scientific meetings planned for the USA are being rescheduled elsewhere.
I can confirm this from colleagues I know. Many scientific conferences were moved to countries like Norway, Sweden, or the Netherlands in the last couple of years, because scientists from ME countries would have had no chance to get their visas in a timely manner... even if the conferences were announced 3 to 4 months in advance. The US visa allocation procedures have become way too random, unpredictable, and arbitrary that one can't rely on them anymore.
What if your favorite DNS server happens to use a multicast address, and for some strange routing reasons, your queries get routed to the other side of the world... perhaps through the Med, every now and then? Or if you even happend to be an mDNS early adopter/tester/developer/..., and the same happens?
And even if you didn't look so far, network links get congested, and traffic could easily overflow to peering networks, and this could very well mean, that ISP A and ISP B, both in the US, transmit packets through Asia or Europe as a congestion-avoidance measure. As a matter of fact, it happens quite frequently (and the other way around too).
Ever tried to print a web page with arabic or farsi characters on a PostScript-enabled HP LaserJet without rasterizing? Since those fonts are not part of the standard PostScript font set, all you get are a lot of empty squares. So, now, who's the "bad guy" who sold the iranians GhostScript or the Windows drivers to actually USE those printers with their fonts?
(What a silly embargo...)
Because the truth is no one outside the Web world (that's us) cares, and we represent a very tiny part of Amazon's customer base
There are NO Amazon customers outside the Web world...
But, point well taken: you're quite right. This is a non-issue for nearly all Amazon customers anyway. We software patent opponents do care a lot (though not all of us would avoid using Amazon because of this silly patent), but we're an insignificant minority of their customer base.
When I am recording some TV show and a commercial starts, I just press stop on the VCR. When the commercial ends, I press record. The result is smooth, as if the commercial was never there. I can do the same when I connect two VCRs to cut commercials out of a TV show that I had recorded by setting the VCR to do so without my presence. Can DVD and/or hard drive recorders do so?
Of course, a HDD recorder will do just the same: you can pause the recording and resume it after the ads end. But wait, it is even more practical! Just record the whole show to HDD (you may even do something else in the mean time), and then, before you want to burn it to DVD, you can edit/cut the ad blocks out with extreme precision (up to a single frame, if you're a purist), and you may fast-forward between and within the ad blocks and get the work done in a couple of minutes (say, 5 minutes or so copy-editing out the ads for an average length movie).
I recorded more than 2000 VHS cassettes (240 mins each) of movies and series and always cut out the ads while recording. Now I use a HDD recorder, and never missed my VCR recorder, because it's so much easier to do the editing when I DO have time to babysit the whole process in real-time.
The only thing that's annoying: I still have a lot of media shifting to do, despite all re-runs that I've recorded on HDD directly off the air -- not every good show gets re-broadcasted, which is really a shame!
blog traffic comprises only 1.19% of all internet traffic in the UK
Contrary to spam... which BTW is an excellent tool to hide terrorist communication channels and to defeat traffic analysis. I'm wondering that paranoid governments have not yet criminalized spamming on grounds of terrorism, i.e. enact CAN(T)-SPAM v2.0.
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
It's like the NSA drinking from a fire hose: they are collecting so much more data than they can analyze in real time! Such data is only useful post factum, to retrace what happened (cf. 9/11). The chance to catch something useful in time and react proactively is extremely slim.
So the question is: is it worth it to undermine informational freedom of citizens (and here non-citizens) and give Government a huge database that could be used to silence opposition by blackmailing or that could leak data to third parties like, say, private investigators, just to facilitate forensic investigations? Some may say yes, others would say no.
Technically, nothing's wrong with "subnotebook". But psychologically and in terms of marketing, it's akin to "substandard", something "inferior" and of "less value". Yeah, silly for sure, but customers are a funny bunch.
However if you are going to get a broad cooperate acceptance of removing DRM you are going to create a culture where illegally downloading free music and not paying for them ever is no longer considered socially acceptable.
Since freely accessible digital music is just as ubiquitous as free websites (think also commercial stuff like newspapers etc.), why should people consider it socially unacceptable?
Selling bytes is exactly the broken business model we're talking about: if they want to make money, they'll have to sell events, gigs, tours and a lot of merchandising fan-stuff. That's where the big money is, and not in that piddly little legal digital downloads fringe market. A market that's getting smaller and smaller the bigger the prive collections on HDDs get.
At the end of the day, music files themselves are just promotional material. Sure, most labels and many regular Joes didn't yet digest this new reality, but it's already happening. Just as online newspapers can't survive on paying subscriptions, will labels not survive on selling digital music (alone).
Frankly, iTunes and most other stores are way too expensive, with or without DRM. Something like $1,10 to $1,30 per full album @128kbps or a bit more for better sampling rates as allofmp3.com used to offer (in many non-DRMed formats like mp3, ogg, even flac) seems to be just right. Everything above that is not justified, IMHO. But that's just me: most pop music junkies won't care and will happily shell out $$$ for music as long as they can afford it (but for how long with the economic downturn remains to be seen).
But I could see Google creating software and website that is designed to help them record and market their own stuff.
That would be preferable to a new label: Google Music (gMusic?). But how many artists are also tech-savvy to use those tools? Many may prefer to sign up and let Google do everything from production up to the marketing. But then, wouldn't a Google Label be evil too and contrary to company policy?
This is the thing that really annoys me. The statement from Burnham is quite open that his priority is supporting the artists no matter what. When do the other 60 million of the population get their go?
The artists (or more precisely their labels) can -- and probably do -- provide kickbacks to the politicians, either directly or as campaign donations while the ordinary citizens provide "only" votes... and vote usually like sheep (if it were not so, the Pirate Parties would flourish all over the world). From a politician's point of view, acting as they do is a pretty rational way of earning their 30 pieces of silver.
That's not a problem. Egypt, Morocco, and a few other Med countries cooperate very closely with the US DoD. Their military uses and relies on GPS; and while not members of NATO, they're participating in common exercises. It's no risk for them to rely on GPS (and possibly cross-checking with the newer systems).
Even if you do have a GPS in a city like cairo, it would prove useless against the streets there.
Well, it's not really a GPS issue per se, it's the map date that is always hopelessly outdated or plain wrong. A rather common problem in many countries.
I have for sale EVERY VISA NUMBER EVER ISSUED! From 4000 0000 0000 0000 to 4999 9999 9999 9999! (Note: some numbers may not be valid.)
Well, do you also have the personal data belonging to those VISA numbers? Like, say, owner, expiration date, etc? Because that's what this 21M bank account list is all about: it contains not just account numbers, but also all associated identifying data (names, addresses, dates of birth, in some cases even a balance).
Armed with that, criminals can easily charge those accounts and EVERYONE in Germany MUST now check their accounts at least every 6 weeks and issue reverse-charges if they discovered fraudulent activity. And that's not always obvious, because criminals can charge small amounts and label them rather innocuously, so they could go undetected (or rather: unnoticed) for longer than mere 6 weeks.
"Walls of Shame" are actually socially unacceptable in many civilized countries. In fact, it is not only punishable under civil laws (libel and defamation), it is often a criminal offense. And it doesn't matter wether the accusation is true or false! Should any one involved in such activities visit one of those countries, they may even risk jail time, if not just huge fines, even if the public pillories and their own location were abroad.
While it's good for Linux adoption, what's the point here?
One of the main reason for using an open source OS is for its owners to inspect its source code and be confident enough that no backdoor is being hidden in there. But why would a visitor of a cyber cafe want to inspect the machine he'll be using there? After all, such machines are by definitionunsecure public terminals par excellence, in free and non-free countries alike, no matter what OS they are running. Stuff like OPIE et. al. has been invented for exactly this purpose.
And as to fears from the Chinese government of US government spying on them: I could understand they'd forbid the use of Windows on their own military, or civil installations, and even enact a policy to encourage their private companies to avoid it, but internet cafes? Seriously, what kind of secrets are hidden on those machines besides credit card numbers of unsuspecting visitors and the whole enchilada of malware, keyloggers, viruses, trojans and worms?
Slashdot Mirror
At least, it helps autopsy.
I can confirm this from colleagues I know. Many scientific conferences were moved to countries like Norway, Sweden, or the Netherlands in the last couple of years, because scientists from ME countries would have had no chance to get their visas in a timely manner... even if the conferences were announced 3 to 4 months in advance. The US visa allocation procedures have become way too random, unpredictable, and arbitrary that one can't rely on them anymore.
What if your favorite DNS server happens to use a multicast address, and for some strange routing reasons, your queries get routed to the other side of the world... perhaps through the Med, every now and then? Or if you even happend to be an mDNS early adopter/tester/developer/..., and the same happens? And even if you didn't look so far, network links get congested, and traffic could easily overflow to peering networks, and this could very well mean, that ISP A and ISP B, both in the US, transmit packets through Asia or Europe as a congestion-avoidance measure. As a matter of fact, it happens quite frequently (and the other way around too).
That would be $0xffffffff, and even $0xffffffffffffffff for the new 64-bit SCO. Enough to keep the frivolous lawsuits going for a while...
Ever tried to print a web page with arabic or farsi characters on a PostScript-enabled HP LaserJet without rasterizing? Since those fonts are not part of the standard PostScript font set, all you get are a lot of empty squares. So, now, who's the "bad guy" who sold the iranians GhostScript or the Windows drivers to actually USE those printers with their fonts? (What a silly embargo...)
There are NO Amazon customers outside the Web world...
But, point well taken: you're quite right. This is a non-issue for nearly all Amazon customers anyway. We software patent opponents do care a lot (though not all of us would avoid using Amazon because of this silly patent), but we're an insignificant minority of their customer base.
Of course, a HDD recorder will do just the same: you can pause the recording and resume it after the ads end. But wait, it is even more practical! Just record the whole show to HDD (you may even do something else in the mean time), and then, before you want to burn it to DVD, you can edit/cut the ad blocks out with extreme precision (up to a single frame, if you're a purist), and you may fast-forward between and within the ad blocks and get the work done in a couple of minutes (say, 5 minutes or so copy-editing out the ads for an average length movie).
I recorded more than 2000 VHS cassettes (240 mins each) of movies and series and always cut out the ads while recording. Now I use a HDD recorder, and never missed my VCR recorder, because it's so much easier to do the editing when I DO have time to babysit the whole process in real-time.
The only thing that's annoying: I still have a lot of media shifting to do, despite all re-runs that I've recorded on HDD directly off the air -- not every good show gets re-broadcasted, which is really a shame!
blog traffic comprises only 1.19% of all internet traffic in the UK
Contrary to spam... which BTW is an excellent tool to hide terrorist communication channels and to defeat traffic analysis. I'm wondering that paranoid governments have not yet criminalized spamming on grounds of terrorism, i.e. enact CAN(T)-SPAM v2.0.
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
It's like the NSA drinking from a fire hose: they are collecting so much more data than they can analyze in real time! Such data is only useful post factum, to retrace what happened (cf. 9/11). The chance to catch something useful in time and react proactively is extremely slim.
So the question is: is it worth it to undermine informational freedom of citizens (and here non-citizens) and give Government a huge database that could be used to silence opposition by blackmailing or that could leak data to third parties like, say, private investigators, just to facilitate forensic investigations? Some may say yes, others would say no.
Technically, nothing's wrong with "subnotebook". But psychologically and in terms of marketing, it's akin to "substandard", something "inferior" and of "less value". Yeah, silly for sure, but customers are a funny bunch.
That was one of my all-times favorites!
I'm running Windows XP SP3 MUI in qemu on FreeBSD/amd64 7.1-PRERELEASE, and it runs flawlessly.
Then they came for me ... and there is no one left to speak up for me
Well, I'd like to speak for...@#$! NO CARRIER
However if you are going to get a broad cooperate acceptance of removing DRM you are going to create a culture where illegally downloading free music and not paying for them ever is no longer considered socially acceptable.
Since freely accessible digital music is just as ubiquitous as free websites (think also commercial stuff like newspapers etc.), why should people consider it socially unacceptable?
Selling bytes is exactly the broken business model we're talking about: if they want to make money, they'll have to sell events, gigs, tours and a lot of merchandising fan-stuff. That's where the big money is, and not in that piddly little legal digital downloads fringe market. A market that's getting smaller and smaller the bigger the prive collections on HDDs get.
At the end of the day, music files themselves are just promotional material. Sure, most labels and many regular Joes didn't yet digest this new reality, but it's already happening. Just as online newspapers can't survive on paying subscriptions, will labels not survive on selling digital music (alone).
Frankly, iTunes and most other stores are way too expensive, with or without DRM. Something like $1,10 to $1,30 per full album @128kbps or a bit more for better sampling rates as allofmp3.com used to offer (in many non-DRMed formats like mp3, ogg, even flac) seems to be just right. Everything above that is not justified, IMHO. But that's just me: most pop music junkies won't care and will happily shell out $$$ for music as long as they can afford it (but for how long with the economic downturn remains to be seen).
But I could see Google creating software and website that is designed to help them record and market their own stuff.
That would be preferable to a new label: Google Music (gMusic?). But how many artists are also tech-savvy to use those tools? Many may prefer to sign up and let Google do everything from production up to the marketing. But then, wouldn't a Google Label be evil too and contrary to company policy?
Piracy is what happens near Somalia right now. Oh, you meant copyright infringement? Nevermind...
have these people not heard of global warming?
That's why they try to apply local cooling to their beach.
Reproducing a PDP-11 simulator on modern hardware would be relatively trivial,
it is.
This is the thing that really annoys me. The statement from Burnham is quite open that his priority is supporting the artists no matter what. When do the other 60 million of the population get their go?
The artists (or more precisely their labels) can -- and probably do -- provide kickbacks to the politicians, either directly or as campaign donations while the ordinary citizens provide "only" votes... and vote usually like sheep (if it were not so, the Pirate Parties would flourish all over the world). From a politician's point of view, acting as they do is a pretty rational way of earning their 30 pieces of silver.
That's not a problem. Egypt, Morocco, and a few other Med countries cooperate very closely with the US DoD. Their military uses and relies on GPS; and while not members of NATO, they're participating in common exercises. It's no risk for them to rely on GPS (and possibly cross-checking with the newer systems).
Even if you do have a GPS in a city like cairo, it would prove useless against the streets there.
Well, it's not really a GPS issue per se, it's the map date that is always hopelessly outdated or plain wrong. A rather common problem in many countries.
I have for sale EVERY VISA NUMBER EVER ISSUED! From 4000 0000 0000 0000 to 4999 9999 9999 9999! (Note: some numbers may not be valid.)
Well, do you also have the personal data belonging to those VISA numbers? Like, say, owner, expiration date, etc? Because that's what this 21M bank account list is all about: it contains not just account numbers, but also all associated identifying data (names, addresses, dates of birth, in some cases even a balance).
Armed with that, criminals can easily charge those accounts and EVERYONE in Germany MUST now check their accounts at least every 6 weeks and issue reverse-charges if they discovered fraudulent activity. And that's not always obvious, because criminals can charge small amounts and label them rather innocuously, so they could go undetected (or rather: unnoticed) for longer than mere 6 weeks.
"Walls of Shame" are actually socially unacceptable in many civilized countries. In fact, it is not only punishable under civil laws (libel and defamation), it is often a criminal offense. And it doesn't matter wether the accusation is true or false! Should any one involved in such activities visit one of those countries, they may even risk jail time, if not just huge fines, even if the public pillories and their own location were abroad.
While it's good for Linux adoption, what's the point here?
One of the main reason for using an open source OS is for its owners to inspect its source code and be confident enough that no backdoor is being hidden in there. But why would a visitor of a cyber cafe want to inspect the machine he'll be using there? After all, such machines are by definition unsecure public terminals par excellence, in free and non-free countries alike, no matter what OS they are running. Stuff like OPIE et. al. has been invented for exactly this purpose.
And as to fears from the Chinese government of US government spying on them: I could understand they'd forbid the use of Windows on their own military, or civil installations, and even enact a policy to encourage their private companies to avoid it, but internet cafes? Seriously, what kind of secrets are hidden on those machines besides credit card numbers of unsuspecting visitors and the whole enchilada of malware, keyloggers, viruses, trojans and worms?